Alien, page 16
“It’s the pipes,” Fowler replied. “I’m sure it’s just the pipes.” He peered over the marine’s shoulder and down one of the side hallways. “And the ground outside is shifting. The quakes are getting stronger, and down here, sounds are distorted.” It sounded as if he was trying to convince himself as much as them.
“Let’s keep moving,” Alec said. He eyed the corridor to the left, and then shifted his gaze to the right. “I assume we keep going straight?”
“You assume correctly,” Fowler said.
They moved forward again, but the occasional groaning of the pipes—if it was the pipes—had them on edge. Even if Fowler was correct, Siobhan thought, the concept of being buried in ground that was being torn apart was no more comforting than the idea of Xenomorphs closing in on them.
“Where are those caches of flamethrowers, Dr. Fowler?” she asked.
“Just up ahead here,” he replied, indicating an upcoming corridor on the left. “There’s a small utility room a little ways down. The stores of M240s are in there.” He reached the corner and turned it quickly, momentarily disappearing from sight, and Siobhan felt a twinge of panic. It wasn’t that she cared about what happened to him, not personally, but he was their guide through the Weyland-Yutani underground. His disappearing on them would mean nothing good.
When she and the others rounded the corner, they saw Dr. Fowler standing in front of a lighter gray metal door with a yellow stripe running across it. He was pulling another of the key cards from his key ring, one with a matching stripe, and dipping it into the lock of the door. A tiny green glow cast its light on his fingers, and the door swung open.
“In here,” Dr. Fowler said, and he went inside.
At the doorway, Siobhan peered in. Dr. Fowler had been right about it being a small—very small—room. It was lined on three sides with metal shelves, and on those shelves sat a number of crates with the Weyland-Yutani name and logo—a yellow W over a gray Y on a black background. “Building Better Worlds,” their slogan read. Siobhan shook her head. It was a crock of shit.
“Here we are,” Dr. Fowler said, pulling down one of the larger crates and setting it on the floor. “This should have the M240s in it.” With some effort, he pried the lid off the crate. Inside were two incinerator units. It was hardly a cache, as Dr. Fowler had described it, but it was something.
“Are there more?” Elkins asked, looking at the other shelves.
“There should be,” Fowler replied. He picked up one of the M240s from the crate and held it with an admiring smile. Then he pulled the trigger. The blast of flame from the end shot close to Siobhan’s leg, and she jumped.
“Sorry, Dr. McCormick,” Dr. Fowler said absently. “Just testing it to make sure it works.”
“It works,” Siobhan said, glaring at the man. She bent and picked up the other weapon herself, and when she stood, she saw Alec looking at her uneasily.
“I can handle it,” she said to Alec. “Don’t worry.”
“Are you sure about that?” Fowler responded. “It’s a big gun for a little woman, if you don’t mind my saying so.” He gave her a smirk. “You think you can use it?”
She pulled the trigger, and this time, the burst of flame came dangerously close to the top of the scientist’s head. He flinched.
She smiled. “Yeah, I think I’ve got the hang of it.”
The marines searched the rest of the shelves, but beyond the crate that Dr. Fowler had found, there were no other M240s. There were a few M41A pulse rifles, an M56A2 smartgun, and a few handguns, with accompanying ammo.
“Looks like your company screwed you on your so-called cleaning and disinfecting measures, Dr. Fowler,” Elkins said. “This stuff is useless.”
“These are weapons,” Fowler objected.
“Carrying around more guns like the ones we have will just slow us down,” Alec said. To his squad, he added, “There are boxes of 10×24mm caseless ammunition in that crate there. Grab that—we can always use more ammo.”
“Copy that,” Elkins said, and he and Roots started stuffing boxes of ammo into the many pockets of their uniforms. When they and Alec had emptied the crates, they all gathered at the door.
“Okay, Dr. Fowler,” Alec said. “Take us out of here.”
Fowler led them back into the main branch of the tunnel. He’d made it halfway to another corridor when an echoing chirp arrested their movement. To Siobhan it sounded metallic… like a claw briefly scraping a metal pipe. It also could have been a chittering purr, a single throat calling to others.
The sound came from somewhere behind them.
“You heard that, right?” Roots asked. “That wasn’t just old pipes.”
“Like I said,” Fowler replied, “sounds get distorted down here. Could be nothing.” He didn’t look convinced, though.
“Or it could be something,” Alec said. “And something down here with us is not good.”
Siobhan squinted to see into the gloom of the tunnel behind them. One of the lights several yards back was flickering. Was that movement? It was hard to tell. Shadows and slivers of tunnel looked distorted as the light strobed on and off.
“This way,” Fowler said. He was gesturing ahead of them, but his gaze was fixed on the tunnel behind. They started to move out again, a quiet urgency in their steps, but Siobhan remained transfixed by the flickering lights.
There was movement there—she was sure of it.
A dark, bony, segmented silhouette rose up and up, unfurling.
“Alec…” Siobhan raised the flamethrower.
A second silhouette dropped from the ceiling down there.
A third emerged from one of the side corridors. “Alec!” Siobhan backed away until she felt a hand on her shoulder. She jumped and glanced over her shoulder. It was Alec.
“I see them.” He pointed his gun. Over his shoulder, he said, “We have company.”
The sound of footsteps hard and fast on the tunnel floor echoed from behind. Siobhan turned to see Fowler running.
“Dr. Fowler, wait!” she shouted after him.
“Go,” Alec said. “Everyone, follow him. Go!”
They all began to run. Siobhan heard the now-familiar screech of one of the Xenomorphs, magnified and echoing through the tunnel. Others responded, and it sounded like a chorus. It was impossible to tell if other creatures in other corridors were responding as well; the noise seemed everywhere at once.
At a corridor bend some distance away, Dr. Fowler turned to the right, and the others followed, trying to keep him in their sights. Siobhan had just a moment at the bend to look back, and she saw that a fourth Xenomorph had joined the trio. They were galloping along the floor, the walls, the ceiling, gaining on her and the others.
She blasted flame in their direction, hoping to shock them into slowing down. The Xenomorph in the lead jerked back nearly to a stop. It seemed to know fire, to understand its danger, whether by experience or instinct, but the flames went out almost as soon as she laid them down. When the way was clear, the Xenomorph picked up speed again.
Siobhan ducked down the corridor and ran to catch up to the others. In the lead, Dr. Fowler turned left down another corridor, and a squeal from the branch opposite sent a flare of terror through her. Alec had just reached the turn when a fifth Xenomorph leaped from the ceiling to the floor, skidding into him. The force of the impact knocked the rifle from his hands and sent him sliding on his back across the surface. The alien crept toward him, saliva dripping from its jaws. It loomed over him, taking up most of the junction.
Alec’s gun lay out of his reach. He seemed to be gauging whether he’d be fast enough to dodge and grab it before the alien was on top of him. Siobhan didn’t think he would be. She got up close on the thing, but it didn’t seem to notice. It was preoccupied with Alec, reaching down toward his legs.
He tried to scuttle backward.
“Sarge!” Elkins’s voice came from somewhere farther up. “Sarge!”
The alien glanced up and then back at Alec.
Its jaw opened.
Siobhan pulled the trigger of the flamethrower.
For a moment, all she knew was light and heat as the flames of the weapon shot out at the creature in front of her. Its screech became a scream, and it writhed under the painful blast. Then it took off down the corridor from which it had come.
Siobhan ran to Alec. During the creature’s confusion, he had dived for his gun, grabbing it. She offered him a hand up, and he smiled at her.
“Thank you,” he said. “I owe you one.”
She shrugged. “You’ve saved me a few times. Just trying to even things out.”
With a smile, he took her hand and they ran to meet Roots and Elkins, who was carrying Kira, backtracking their way to their fallen sergeant. Fowler wasn’t with them, Siobhan noticed.
“You’re okay,” Roots said between breaths. “We tried to get to you.”
“No problem. Siobhan had my back.” Alec squeezed her hand gently.
“This way,” Elkins said. “Fowler kept going, the fu—” He stopped when he remembered Kira, who, clinging to his neck, had buried her face in his shoulder. “—the coward. Anyway, he went down this corridor up here on the right.”
Behind them, the howls of the Xenomorphs seemed to fill all the tunnels. It sounded as if they were getting closer.
Again they ran. A few of the hallways split off from the one they were following, but these appeared to stop in dead ends, so they kept along the straight path. The main corridor itself leaned a bit to the left, but mostly ran one way. Siobhan’s sense of direction was hopelessly thrown off, and there was no time to think, only flee.
Sometimes the sounds of the aliens grew louder, and sometimes fainter.
They emerged at a four-way junction, and the sounds died down to a faraway din.
“Which way?” Roots asked, his voice tense.
“If he gets on that ship and leaves without us…” Elkins didn’t finish his thought.
Siobhan scanned the different branches. The one directly ahead had a metal ladder leading upward, and she thought she heard the rhythmic clunk of footsteps climbing up.
“That way!” She pointed toward the ladder.
They reached it in a matter of moments. At the base of the ladder, Alec shone his flashlight up just in time to see Dr. Fowler lift a hatch, flooding the cylinder with bright sunlight. Then he climbed out, and closed the hatch.
“That son of a bitch,” Alec muttered, and jumped onto the ladder. He began to climb. Elkins put Kira on the ladder next.
“Follow Sarge, okay, honey?” the corporal said. “He’s strong enough to open the hatch.” The girl nodded. Elkins gestured to Siobhan. “You next.”
She slung the M240 over her shoulder by the strap and began to climb. Behind her, she heard Roots muttering.
“Don’t be a hero, Kenny. Get your ass on this ladder.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” Elkins said.
Alec reached the hatch, and with a grunt heaved it open, climbing out. Sunlight blinded Siobhan for a moment but she shielded her eyes and kept climbing.
“Keep going, honey,” she said to Kira. “You’re doing great. We’re almost there.”
Alec appeared over the hatch’s opening, lending a hand to Kira to pull her out. Then he reached down and took Siobhan’s hand, helping her over the lip of the hatch. She blinked a few times, her eyes adjusting to daylight, as Roots and Elkins followed behind.
There was the platform, as Fowler had said, and parked on it was a large ship, a bulk of black metal the size of an Earth-city block with a company logo stenciled on the side that Siobhan didn’t recognize, as well as the ship’s name: ASTRAEUS.
Fowler had already covered half the distance to it and was running like hell.
“Go! Go!” Alec shouted. “Don’t let him get on that ship without us!”
They took off running, Elkins and Alec in the lead. The two closed the distance to Fowler, who was starting to lag and breathe heavily. They tackled him just as the ship’s drawbridge door descended. The three of them landed hard on the ground.
“You son of a bitch!” Alec shouted as the scientist squirmed beneath their grasp. “Give me one reason not to kill you! Just one reason not to shoot your sorry ass right here!”
“I thought you were the aliens!” Fowler shouted, holding his hands up to protect a face smudged with gray dirt. His glasses were askew, and his hair stuck up in odd directions. “I’m sorry!”
Roots, who had picked up Kira, kept pace with Siobhan. The three joined Alec, Elkins, and the doctor, breathing almost as hard as he was.
“You were going to leave without us, you sorry sack of shit!” Alec pulled back a fist.
“No! No, I—” Whatever excuse Dr. Fowler was about to give was eclipsed by the angry screeches erupting from the tunnel. Siobhan looked in time to see Xenomorphs—she counted five of them—spilling over the mouth of the hatch and into the light. They seemed undeterred.
“Run!” she screamed.
Alec let Fowler up. Roots pulled him and Elkins to their feet. Siobhan offered a hand to the Weyland-Yutani scientist, but he waved her away, getting up on his own. They ran up the ramp of the door and into the ship.
Siobhan paused halfway up as one of the Xenomorphs reached the ramp’s edge. She turned the flamethrower on it and it squealed, falling back. Alec took her arm and tugged her onto the ship. The last thing she saw before the door closed was one of the creatures lunging at her.
There was a clanging thump, followed by another and another as the Xenomorphs threw themselves at the metal door.
“Fire it up!” Dr. Fowler shouted, heading toward the bridge. “Get this thing off the ground!”
Whoever he was addressing, they complied. The rumble of the engines drowned out the sound of the screeching outside. The rumble of the moon itself, even louder, groaned over the sound of the engines. The ship shook violently, its nose-end tilting up and then falling back to the ground with a bone-jarring thud. Then it keeled to the right.
Roots swore loudly. “The ground’s opening up!”
The others staggered after Fowler toward the bridge. There were two middle-aged men at the helm—a taller, dark-skinned man with a baseball cap and a somewhat younger white man with a messy thatch of blond hair. They barely acknowledged the influx of people onto their bridge, nor did they respond to Fowler’s yelling over their shoulder. Calm and cool, they flipped switches and hit buttons, clicking on sensors and firing thrusters in an attempt to right the ship again.
Through the front windshield, Siobhan saw the Xenomorphs charge the ship. A sudden zigzagging crack split the platform, and two slipped into the chasm that appeared suddenly beneath their feet, screeching and scrabbling for a moment with those long talons at the edge of the crumbling dirt before disappearing.
Two others leaped the width of the chasm and slid across the dirt toward the ship. They caught their balance and galloped ahead.
The ship pulled its tail end out of the ravine and lurched forward. The taller man—Dr. Fowler had called him the pilot—barked at the younger man beside him.
“Sam, blast those things out of our way, okay?”
“Sure thing, boss,” Sam replied, and he leaned a dual-pronged lever forward. Twin laser blasts shot out from somewhere beneath the windshield, hitting one of the aliens square in the chest. The hit burned a hole through the exoskeleton and, ostensibly, the meat beneath. The alien dropped to the platform, its blood steaming on the ground.
The Xenomorph who had been keeping pace with it dodged the laser, ducking under it, and pushed forward.
“Missed one,” the pilot said calmly.
“On it,” Sam replied. He jerked the lever back and then forward again. Part of the platform groaned and folded into a new rift, which splintered toward the ship.
The pilot pulled back on a lever of his own, and the feeling of forward momentum seemed to drop away. The ship lifted up off the ground as another of the Xenomorphs fell into the widening gorge where the vessel had just been.
Siobhan leaned closer to the windshield, peering down. When the last of the Xenomorphs leaped up and landed with a thump against the glass, she uttered a little cry, her finger on the trigger of the M240.
The thing screamed, its talons scraping at the windshield as it tried to hold on. A wound on its shoulder bled down its arm; Siobhan felt with horrifying certainty that it would jerk that arm and the blood would splatter the windshield, eating through it, and as soon as they hit the vacuum of space, the pressure would cause it to shatter…
“That one’s yours,” Sam said.
The pilot nodded. As the nose of the ship tilted upward and they climbed into the sky, he tilted the steering lever to the left and the ship rolled in that direction. The alien swung out to the left as well, its blood spraying out and away.
“You all might want to get yourselves seated,” the pilot said as the ship lurched back to the right. The Xenomorph clung to the outside for several moments, then lost its grip and slid off and away. Siobhan saw it falling back toward an ever-widening canyon of opened-up moon before the ship lifted up into the clouds, and then into the black of space.
18
During that first afternoon, Siobhan came to learn that the men who were flying the Astraeus were named Gavin Broadwell and Sam Urban, civilian flight contractors for a company named Icarus Flight, which hired them out for piloting and navigation jobs to bigger corporations. This meant that they weren’t technically Weyland-Yutani employees, but independent workers loyal only to whoever paid the highest number of credits.
In fact, they seemed to care little for Icarus or Weyland-Yutani, beyond the fact that one had hired them for work and the other delivered the credits to their accounts. She picked up most of this from Dr. Fowler, who was passingly familiar with Icarus as an affiliate. The men spoke little to anyone but each other, and even then only sparingly.
It was useful information to Siobhan, though, and as a result, it hadn’t taken much to get Gavin and Sam to reroute their course to LV-846. Alec and Siobhan had explained what had happened on the moon and the plan to fly to their original relocation destination. At first, it had been of little interest to either the pilot or his crewman, until Gavin learned that Roots and Elkins had served on Kepler-2801 during the riots. Broadwell had been there as well, as an escapee from a nearby bombed-out village. He had, in fact, narrowly avoided being mowed down by gun-toting vagrants looking to keep refugees from bringing the plague of black pathogen into their camps.
